Five teams of students and teachers from Kent Place School and Trinity Hall spent the weekend at Georgetown University’s EthicsLab to explore the over-arching question: What are the ethical issues involving food in your school community?
The Ethics Institute at Kent Place School partnered with Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics’ Ethics Lab to launch this innovative program, a unique educational opportunity available to high school students and their teachers. Ethics in Action combines the study of ethics and the practice of ethical decision-making with design. The program began with a four-day summer immersion internship. Scholars from the Ethics Institute at Kent Place School taught participants about ethics and the values-based ethical decision-making model and gave them the opportunity to examine complex ethical issues from multiple perspectives and disciplines. EthicsLab scholars from the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, immersed participants in the design model. The Georgetown weekend was an essential component of this groundbreaking program in which students and teachers had the opportunity to continue working on personas and iterations of their designs.
The Ethics in Action weekend in Georgetown was creatively inspiring for student participants. “At the EthicsLab, my team got the opportunity to delve even deeper into our ethical issue related to food with the help of the Georgetown design fellows and Kent Place faculty,” shared Amanda Donaghue, Kent Place School senior. “The weekend at Georgetown University was productive for my team, because we finalized our target audience and even developed a prototype for a solution.”
During the winter of 2016, all five teams will return to Kent Place to continue receiving critiques from EthicsLab scholars. At a summit on April 15, teams will present their work and members will earn the title “Design Fellow.”
For additional information, please visit www.kentplace.org/ethics